e shoulder and shrieking in his ear. His eyes lifted from the face
of the fallen man to that of the heliotrope silk-shirted person beside
him.

"He's not really badly hurt, is he?" he inquired slowly. "I--I didn't
hit him--too hard?"

Ogden ceased for a moment thumping him on the back.

"Hurt!" he yelped. "Didn't hit him too hard! Why, man, he's stiff,
right now. He's ready for the coroner! Gad--and I was pitying you--I
was----"

Young Denny shook him off and crossed and knelt beside the kneeling
Hogarty. And at that moment Sutton opened his eyes again and stared
dully into the ex-lightweight's face. After a time recognition began
to dawn in that gaze--understanding--comprehension. Once it shifted to
Denny, and then came back again. He made several futile efforts before
he could make his lips frame the words.

Then, "Amateur," he muttered, and he managed to rip one glove from a
limp hand and hurl it from him as he struggled to sit erect.
"Amateur--hell! A-a-a-h, Flash, what're you tryin' to hand me?"

CHAPTER XIV

Denny had begun to get back into his clothes, pausing now and then to
dabble tentatively at the freshly broken bruise with the wet towel
which Ogden had at last forced him to accept, when the door of the
dressing-room opened, and Hogarty stepped briskly inside and closed
the door behind him.

The ex-lightweight ignored entirely the covertly delighted grin that
lit up Bobby Ogden's features at his appearance. His own too-pale,
too-thin lips were curved in a ghost of a smile; his face had lost all
its dangerous tautness, but the greatest change of all lay there in
his eyes. Their flaring antagonism had burnt itself out. And when
Hogarty spoke it was once more in his smoothly perfect, delightfully
measured, best professor-of-English style, for all that his opening
remark was couched in the vernacular.

"Mr. Bolton," he began to the boy sitting quiet before him, "it looks
as though we would have to hand it to you--which I earnestly desire
you to believe I am now doing, with both hands. It may eventually
prove that I lost a most valuable assistant through this morning's
little flurry. I am not quite certain yet as to that as Boots is not
sufficiently himself to give the matter judicious consideration.

"He still thinks I crossed him for the entertainment's sake--which is
of little immediate importance. What I did come in for was to listen
to anything at all that you may have to tell me. You'll